Whumptober 2019- Dragged Away
by Frankie McStein
Summary: Missing scene from Whumptober day 2- Explosion. "I wasn't even talking. I was yelling. Just two words, over and over."


My chest was too tight. Breathing is meant to be this instinctive thing that we do without conscious thought, but you couldn't have proved that by me. I was struggling for every bit of air. My head was no better. My skull felt too small, like my brain was being crushed by the bone that is meant to protect it. My arm was on fire. No, that's a bad choice of words, given that the smoke from the actual fire was tainting every breath I managed to take. My arm was hanging uselessly by my side with white hot tendrils of pain snaking around it. There, that's better.

And none of that mattered because Magnum had been in the flat. The flat that was currently billowing flames and smoke. The flat that had been destroyed by the same explosion that flung me into the wall. Magnum was in there, and then all that was there was flame and smoke. No flat. And no Magnum.

I stared. I'm not sure for how long. I stood, leaning against the wall, and I stared, forcing the pain away. At least, I forced the physical pain away. What's the part of you that hurts when you lose someone? Is it your heart? The pain of losing Magnum felt like it was affecting more than just one part of me.

I felt my hand leave the wall before I realised I had taken a step forward. The flames were too high and too hot. I would never be able to get past them. But Magnum… I felt like I had to try. If it were me in there, if I had been caught up in a bomb blast, he wouldn't be standing around staring uselessly.

I didn't feel the hand tugging on my shoulder. Just like I didn't hear the voice calling to me, ordering me to move. I didn't even feel the arms that wrapped around me.

I noticed when I moved though. The door was suddenly too far away, the heat from the flames that had been painful now just uncomfortable. I didn't want to look away from the flat, but I needed to know what was going on. If my feet were carrying me away down the hallway out of some ingrained survival instinct, then I was going to sit down right there until they listened to me when I said I needed to stay where I was.

And there he was. This random person, someone I had spoken to that morning. Instead of running away from the explosion and the fire, he had run toward it. He had seen me standing there, and he had ignored his own self-preservation instincts to run down and grab me.

But that wasn't a good thing. Magnum could have survived. If he had been in the bedroom or the bathroom and the bomb had been in the kitchen area, he might have just been knocked out. Trapped under some rubble maybe. And I was the only one who knew he was in there which meant I needed to to and look for him.

I tried to explain to my would-be-hero that he actually wasn't helping. In my mind, my argument was flawless, I was calm and rational. It took me a while to realise I wasn't explaining anything. I wasn't even talking. I was yelling. Just two words, over and over.

"No!" was the first. "Magnum!" was the second. It's no wonder he didn't listen. If I were in his situation, I wouldn't have listened to me either.

By the time we had reached the door to the stairwell, I had remembered I could move and I tried to struggle. Oh how I tried. I still couldn't make my right arm listen when I told it to do something, but my left was fine and ready to go. My chest was still struggling with the concept of breathing, but, if I had enough air in my lungs to call out, I had enough to fight.

What I didn't have was any energy. Too much pain and this panic-like feeling that couldn't actually be panic because I don't panic seemed to be sapping my energy. Only one arm? Not a problem. Or a lack of breath? Fine, I'll manage. But only one arm _and_ a lack of breath? Now that's an issue.

I tried kicking my legs, but that was a mistake. All the air I had managed to take in, the air that I hadn't wasted screaming Magnum's name over and over, left me in a rush as pain clawed its way up my spine. The arms that were dragging me away, those bloody arms, were suddenly the only things holding me up. My entire world was swaying and blurring, and I wasn't sure if the pain was physical or emotional any longer. All I did know was that my body was threatening to collapse in on itself, buckling under the mind-destroying agony that was torching a path along every nerve ending.

We were in the lobby before I knew what was happening. I had stopped trying to fight. I had stopped screaming for Magnum. By the time my rescuer had pulled me over to a waiting ambulance, I had even stopped feeling the pain from my various injuries.

There was still pain though. Magnum was gone. That was a pain that I didn't think was ever going to stop. It was going to nestle into that dark little place in my heart where Richard lived. And it was going to stay there.


End file.
